03/30/2012

Wall Street is already in the business of education. Many online schools are for-profit. Eventually, if News Corp head Rupert Murdoch is on the money all schools will be primarily online ones and also publicly traded company. Yeah, we can buy stock in our grandchildren's schools. The edge is that we will have the insider intelligence.

I analyze the phenomenon of online for-profit schools for financial information powerhouse Motley Fool. Here you can read that.

03/29/2012

Yes, there's age bias. Yes, it isn't fair. But if we Baby Boomers don't think about it, research what we might be able to get, and keep applying for jobs and assignments, we find work, often well-paying kind that we excel at.

A close friend's husband took a retirement package from an overseas company. He recognized that it would be difficult to land something else. He was near 70. But he didn't dwell on it. His wife kept him focused. He researched fields in which they needed reliable people like himself.

Among what he turned up was drivers for local short hauls. He studied for the exam in order to be licensed. Then he went in person to those companies and asked to fill out an application. He was willing to put in any shift. He's been working for a company which serves the food industry for 6 years.

An acquaintance of mine was laid off from her marketing job about a year ago. She was in denial about the difficulty of finding another full time job, with benefits. But she got the picture soon enough. She kept from dwelling on the obstacles she faced and approached it as, first of all, a numbers game. She applied and applied to every full time, part time and temp job, customizing each cover letter. Secondly, she presented herself as a problem-solver. Soon she was able to establish herself as a just-in-time consultant.

The disappointment for her is that when COBRA runs out she will have to research where to get medical insurance. Everyone, including me, tells her to check out what professional organizations offer that benefit at affordable rates to members. Before I qualified for Medicare, I obtained that through the organization for freelancers Mediabistro.com.

Me? I have found that what keeps the angst, which can escalate into panic, at bay is having a steady source of income. The easiest way to ensure that is a part-time job. It doesn't have to be in my field of communications. Actually, it's better if it isn't since it reminds me that the world of work is a big 1. That prevents me from taking the assignments I get too seriously. Also, any 1 of those part-time jobs could lead to a career change. These days I am very open.

The joy of the golden years without work may be the choice of some. But for postal workers it could be a financial tragedy inflicted on them.

The United States Postal Service announced it is offering retirement incentives to many of its career employees. The exact number is 150,000. Eventually it wants to downsize the number of career employees from 551,570 to 400,000.

We know USPS's financial problems. We also know, many of us personally, the pain of being forced out of the only kind of work we knew how to do to earn a living.

Sure, we may still have a good job or a successful business. But, we begin to notice that in group gatherings, attention drifts to the young, even if they had not accomplished all that much, at least not yet. There is deference to potential.

The notion of the very late bloomer, brought mainstream by University of Chicago professor David Galenson, hasn't gotten traction. The phenomenon of paradigm shifts accomplished by Hillary Clinton, Clint Eastwood, Betty White, T. Boone Pickens, and the late Christopher Hitchens is ignored.

After being the center of attention from the media, our confused parents, and bug-eyed employers when we made demands at work, we are now being ignored. So, what do we do? Accomplish more so that we're noticed? Sure, that's possible. But another option is to relish the invisibility to try out what we want to do in our work. After all, no one is really watching any more. All eyes are on Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg.

03/28/2012

The rant right now is that college is so expensive and saddles graduates with years and years of debt. But the consensus is that not going to college is more costly professionally than going.

When we Baby Boomers did college it was cheapo. At Seton Hill, Greensburg, Pennsylvania, the tuition was $700 a year and the board I could earn in a summer. (I had a full tuition scholarship.) But I don't understand how the generation which changed social mores withstood that confined environment.

To begin with, we showed up on campus dead ringers for Peggy Olson from "Mad Men." You got it, hat, gloves, unstylish style of a hairdo, and totally compliant. Attendance at classes was mandatory and roll call was done. Better not buck the party line, even though this was supposed to be venue for critical thinking. Term papers were done to demonstrate that we can follow research, including footnoting, methods. Exams were geared to ensure we had mastered the facts of the course.

Males and females were kept separated, as if spermwould pass through the air by some sinister force and make the females pregnant. If that happened through the air or in some other way, the parents would come to have a showdown withe the hapless male and a marriage there would be.

By time I graduated I was more stupid than when I had arrived with my hat and gloves. My fantasy is to do college again, maybe at Harvard. I want to find out what it is to go to school and grow intellectually. Also, I want to stay over in some male's dorm room.

03/27/2012

Intuitively, most of us Baby Boomers know that if too many of our clients or bosses are lemons we're doing something or maybe a lot of things wrong. Today, I had that confirmed by psychic Andre at Psychic Interative, a web service which provides affordable spiritual insight into what we're doing or not doing.

The conversation started off with my decision to dump a tense client. Always wise Andre asked me how I attracted that kind of client and was there a way I could turn it around. After all, the client was being billed at that nice juicy pre-recession rate.

Mmmmm. After Andre posed that question I sure got to thinking. Despite talent and a bit of a financial cushion right now, I am still giving off near-desperate vibes. Andre had taught me over the past few years not to dig for the why but rather just focus on the behavior and change it.

The rest of the work day went gloriously. My new law of attraction became to pull toward me clients who need my service, respect my ability, and are pleased to be paying an affordable rate. On Thursday I am going for an interview for a part-time assignment. I will approach is as an exploratory, not an ordeal. A few hours ago a prospect called. I listened. I will not follow up. I don't need to cope with his unrealistic expectations.

03/25/2012

Now we have a man of color sitting in the White House and at the conference table with myriad world leaders. But at the time of "Mad Men" ad agencies were dominated by men and they were white. Women played secondary roles, mostly secretaries.

In Sunday's night episode, the agency gets its introduction to changing times. People are color are in its reception area because a job has been advertised, as a result of its feud with another agency Y&R. Probably it will hire 1 or more.

Another sign of change is that GM's Olds division asked the agency for help dealing with Ralph Nader. It was Nader who brought in the consumer movement.

One wonders, given all these developments, will the women in the office begin to figure out that they might be oppressed too? Will Joan, who's on leave at home with a baby, come to her senses? Will Peggy get a sense of herself as a person?

The one bright spot is that there is now a Mr. and Mrs. Don Draper. They love each other. Self-absorbed Don has been able to extend himself to another human being. He's even happy and has mellowed. Folks in the office comment on that. That brings out the deepening unhappiness of Campbell, Pryce, and Sterling in their marriages. Back in those days, people still stuck it out.

It's the kiss of death in the professional marketplace to "act old." But we Baby Boomers are also losing out on getting jobs and plum assignments and orders with customers and clients because we are too intense. We have to rethink that in a world which is already overstimulated.

A client I coach is very successful. But at age 60, he wants to shift gears from being so hands-on in his work to being more the elder statesmen who is quoted by the media, paid to deliver keynote speeches, author books which sell, and be a middleman who refers business to others. What had been getting in the way is his intensity. He's simply too hot. Incidentally, Judy Garland's TV career went down the tubes because she was too hot for that particular small screen medium.

Like most important realizations I came to this one from my own pain. C.S. Lewis observes that experience is a brutal teacher but we learn, by god, we learn. My intensity stood between me and getting the assignment. It was too much for the overwhelmed to absorb. Also some perceived it as trying too hard and therefore annoying. Worst of all, others perceived as my being desperate. Years ago, I had flagged that as a problem in both my personal and professional life Download Geezerguts.

How to tone down the intensity? Simply slow down. Slower transmits the aura of being a confident, successful authority. Don't provide more value than you're getting paid for. Less is always more.

03/24/2012

Age 50 is not a good 1 for hunting for work. Rosie O'Donnell, now 50, could have prevented being canned from OWN, reports THE NATIONAL ENQUIRER.

When the ratings began to drop from the initial audience of about 500,000 Oprah gave her pointers on how to improve the show. Among them was that Rosie talk less about herself, thereby allowing the guests to open up. Rosie ignored the mentoring.

Can Rosie start over with a new persona? This abrasive 1 she cultivated on "The View" isn't resonating with folks in 2012. But she, like Oprah herself, may be stuck in an identity they don't have the emotional strength to change.